Mods News | PCGamesN

Did you know? id originally planned to have their second-ever FPS open with Doomguy playing cards alongside his fellow Martian men-at-arms - right up until the demons burst in to break up the game.

Ultimately, they decided that there was no time for cards in this fastest of the shooty-bangers. But modders have belatedly gone back to add support for self-indulgence in Doom. We live in an age where World of Warcraft does selfies - and now the selfie stick has joined our marine’s armoury too.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is a lesson on how to do a good PC port, enhancing the game with improved textures and fancy lighting, and despite those extra bells and whistles, performance is great, and consistent.

But what really sets it apart is how Metal Gear Solid can now benefit from the creativity of modders. That’s why we can now play all of Ground Zeroes in first-person mode. It makes things considerably more tense. Take a look at it in action, below.

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Dark Souls is a truly great game, but it’s also a shabby one. From Software, bless their hearts, gave us the PC port we were clamouring for even though (as they themselves admitted) they didn’t really know how to make one.

The final result was technically underwhelming, with low resolutions and poor framerates holding back an otherwise stunning game. Thankfully, this is PC gaming, which means when we don’t like something, we fix it ourselves.

Check inside for a collection of mods that will help turn Dark Souls into a port worthy of the PC.

We keep Drangleic at arm’s length. We’re seeing Dark Souls 2’s derelict kingdom not from our own perspective, but behind the hero of the story. We are puppet masters, watching enemies from the safety of behind a knight or a sorcerer’s shoulder and then devising strategies to take them down.

Only, we don’t have to be. Like Dark Souls before it, From Software’s tricky sequel has now got its very own first-person mod. Contrary to the design though it may be, it’s an interesting shift in perspective, a new way to look this peculiar world.

The western highlands of Vvardenfell are known as the West Gash. It’s a matter of Elder Scrolls lore, and the sooner we get over that fact, the sooner we can talk about their reimagining in Skywind. Okay? Okay.

It’s a source of administrative aggravation that we can’t yet add Skywind to our list of the 100 Best Skyrim Mods, because it isn’t finished. But the latest alpha footage shows that a familiar landscape is beginning to emerge.

Update 04/09/14: Almost two years ago we rounded up the 10 best adventure maps in Minecraft. Since then there have been quite a few new ones, and we also realised that adventure maps were not the only incredible map type one could play in Minecraft. So we now present to you the fifty best maps in Minecraft. Enjoy.

Minecraft: the inventor’s paradise. Of course, it’s also the connoisseur's nightmare, since there are so many user-created maps out there it is almost impossible to find the finest creations on offer. Who has time these days to sift through hundreds of Minecraft maps, devour them with your digital senses, and come to a conclusion on which ones are worth your time?

Well, us actually. We’ve scoured forums, marathoned YouTube videos, and sampled more maps than we can count in order to bring you the definitive list. This is the fifty Minecraft maps that you simply must try before you can claim to have tasted the very finest creations of the community.

The SDK for last year’s super-powered Saints Row IV has been released over on the Saints Row mod forums. Well, the first part of the SDK. This means you can replace the game’s already colourful assortment of weapons with monstrous creations of your own.

Saints Row IV mods are nothing new, but until now modders have been restricted to fiddling with the bits and pieces that already exist in the game. That’s allowed them to do some great stuff, like creating a first-person mod.

If there is a single element in PC gaming that defines it and separates it from its console cousins, it would have to be mods. Sure, there’s the freedom that comes with being able to build custom rigs, the powerful GPUs, the shift to digital that’s made buying and playing games so much easier - but it’s modding wizardry that gets me most hot under the collar.

So that’s our Topic of the Week. Mods. Specifically, what are the one’s that have had the greatest impact on you, dear reader. Any game, any mod - we want to know. So tell us, what are your favourite mods?

The ultimate weapon in any narcissist’s arsenal, the selfie, has made its way over from Grand Theft Auto V’s sunny Los Santos to the fourth game’s Liberty City. The game might be six years old, but continues to see modders put a lot of effort into expanding and improving it.

Now Niko can be a proper tourist, taking photos of his own face with Liberty City’s landmarks behind him, blurry and not quite in frame.

The past is history, my arse. The release of Human Revolution has demoted Invisible War from Deus Ex 2 to footnote curio. And since Eidos Montreal turned Thief into an anti-open world, Ion Storm stablemate Thief: Deadly Shadows has suddenly become essential.

With an unusually good sense of timing for a mod, here comes Thief 3 Gold to remove Deadly Shadows’ most tangible misstep: its loading screens.

Once you’ve installed the GTA IV mod that turns you into an elephant, iCEnhancer is likely your next port of call. It’s the comprehensive graphics upgrade that leaves Rockstar North’s six-year-old opus looking realer than real.

But yesterday’s iCEnhancer 3.0 release is set to be its last for a while. Technical artist and lead modder Hayssam Keilany has decided to step away from “guys trying to bring me down constantly".

Kerbal Space Program is rapidly becoming a more expansive and complex rocket simulator. The recent First Contract update added a more fully featured career mode, with currency and science and missions and reputation and explosions. But as well as Squad's own stellar work, there's also an enthusiastic community of modders constantly pumping out their own brand of features and enhancements.

New clouds, better physics, catalogues of new rocket parts. You name it, and within reason, it probably exists somewhere in the Kerbal SpacePort add-on repository. But without a guiding hand it's difficult to know where to begin. So I offer you mine. My guiding hand, that is. Take it, hold tight, and let's fly, like a cosmic Peter Pan, through the magical world of Kerbal Space Program mods.

It’s been a while since I had the itch to reinstall Mount & Blade: Warband, though it was once an itch that never ceased. It looks like it’s back, because I can’t think of many things I’d rather do than play Warsword Conquest right bloody now. It’s a Warhammer total conversion mod, and that’s why.

Ride around the world as a skeleton ne’er do well, joining factions on a whim and split when your purse starts to feel a bit light. Or live the adventurous life of a murderous, boar-loving orc and ex-blood bowl player, pillaging and getting up to no good.

Well that didn’t take very long. The above image is the aftermath of an American invasion of Denmark. In Minecraft. Last week, the Danish GeoData Agency created a 1:1 replica of Denmark in Minecraft. The goal was to show what can be done with free geographical data, in the hopes of educating children.

It only took a few days for players to level most of the country and build on top of the rubble. American tanks were also spotted in Copenhagen. Evidence of the unwarranted attack was captured by Redditor RandomDKguy.

It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting a new STALKER, which is a bitter pill to swallow. However, the progenitor, Shadow of Chernobyl is getting some new life thanks to Lost Alpha: a standalone mod designed to put cut content back in the game as well as overhaul other areas.

The mod, which doesn’t need STALKER to run, was developed using a 2004 build GSC released in 2009, allowing the team to recreate the version of STALKER that never saw the light of day.

As I write this, my hands are covered in the blood of the countless goats I’ve just sacrificed. Why, you ask? The reason is two-fold. Everyone knows that you sacrifice either goats or virgins when you really want something, and Jurassic Park taught me that dinosaurs like goats a lot. And I really want dinosaurs in Arma 3.

Super-serious military sim Arma 2 brought us DayZ, but zombies have been done to death. Arma 3 is bringing us bringing us dinosaurs, which could easily eat a zombie, thanks to a mod from McRuppertle. Point your soon to be terrified eyes in the direction of the T-Rex animation test below.

You may be feeling a little burned by EA’s recent Dungeon Keeper mobile release. It’s the first new game in the franchise for 15 years and by all accounts it’s a soulless, microtransaction-filled grind. Boo to you, EA. Boo to you.

Happily, in the complete opposite end of the marketing spectrum, Andrea Mauro has made a Dungeon Keeper clone with Starcraft 2’s modding tools. He’s released it through the Arcade so anyone can play it, whether they own Starcraft 2 or not.

These running games are all a bit too athletic for me, getting me all sweaty and hungry for a cigarette. And now someone’s only bloody gone and put Temple Run, or a facsimile of Temple Run, into Minecraft. When will the insidious pro-running lobby stop invading our games?

It is actually rather nifty, though, as you will undoubtedly see when you slap your eyes on the gif below.